Arnor B. Elvarsson


Last Name

Elvarsson

First Name

Arnor B.

ORCID

0000-0001-5161-4465

Organisational unit

03859 - Adey, Bryan T. / Adey, Bryan T.

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2021 - 202616
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Publications 1 - 10 of 16
  • The transport infrastructure planning process in Canton Zürich
    Item type: Report
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Adey, Bryan T. (2024)
  • Scanning for potential transport infrastructure modifications to achieve sustainability objectives
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Adey, Bryan T. (2025)
    SBE Conference Series ~ Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2025 Zurich - Extended Abstracts
  • Fast lane for planning cycling infrastructure
    Item type: Presentation
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Zani, David; Adey, Bryan T. (2024)
  • Exploratory modelling for transport infrastructure planning under future uncertainty
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Roman, Orlando; Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Adey, Bryan T. (2023)
    Life-Cycle of Structures and Infrastructure Systems
    Planning transport infrastructure is particularly difficult due to infrastructure’s long-lived nature, unpredictable technological progress and changing mobility trends in society. In complex systems facing major uncertainties, exploratory modelling can help define salient system characteristics and discover potential risks and opportunities by evaluating large ensembles of potential conditions during the planning process. This paper demonstrates how exploratory modelling can provide planning support for a federal highway from Dübendorf to Hinwil in Zürich, Switzerland. We model the future traffic flows at peak hours considering uncertainty in urban development, jobs distribution and future modal share. Current road infrastructure and further potential capacity expansions and reallocations are then tested on their robustness to provide adequate performance (in terms of travel delays) in multiple future scenarios. We use quantitative methods to identify the subset of scenarios representing risks and opportunities for the infrastructure system. The visualization of such subset of scenarios in uncertainty maps can help target interventions only when needed.
  • Mapping the Swiss Road and Rail Infrastructure Planning Process and Identifying Potential Areas for Improvement
    Item type: Journal Article
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Adey, Bryan T. (2025)
    Journal of Infrastructure Systems
    The Swiss transportation infrastructure planning process, like all infrastructure planning processes, requires that the organizations involved determine how societal needs will change over time, how the current infrastructure may accommodate these needs and which interventions will best help modify the infrastructure if modification is required. This is challenging due to the divergence in needs of society, the many different organizations involved in the process, the long duration of the process and the iterative nature of the process. By addressing the efficiency of these processes, society’s changing needs will be accommodated more quickly. Efforts to improve infrastructure planning processes, however, lack an overarching view of the process and therefore cannot optimally improve the process. The work presented in this paper addresses this gap by modeling the Swiss road and rail infrastructure planning process for the first time, assessing its ability to meet societal needs, and making proposals for improvement. This is done by modeling the relevant portions of the planning process, analyzing how decisions are made within the process, and identifying challenges and opportunities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. These challenges and opportunities are put in context using specific case studies in the canton of Zürich. The proposed opportunities for improvement are the adoption of an early planning network-benefit appraisal tool, the establishment of a coordinating body to align the many organizations involved, the systematic explicit consideration of the uncertainty related to planning decisions and the consideration for the time required for planning process tasks. It is suspected that these improvements would help policymakers shape planning processes to better enable planning objectives to be met efficiently and effectively.
  • A methodology to identify and assess transport infrastructure development considering land-use uncertainty
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Marggi, Fabrice; Adey, Bryan T. (2024)
    This paper presents a methodology to identify and assess transport infrastructure development considering land-use uncertainty, emphasizing the challenges posed by divergent stakeholder views, uncertain assumptions, and the time-consuming consensus-building process. In this paper, the methodology is explained through an example of an algorithm designed to generate potential new highway access points, the associated land use scenarios, and their effects on mobility demand. The mobility demand is dependent on the land use scenario and is allocated to the highway infrastructure using travel-time based Voronoi polygons. The demand defined in an origin-destination matrix is allocated to the highway via its access points, i.e., the Voronoi polygon centroids and can be dynamically reallocated dependent on the proposed development. The generated infrastructure development is then assessed using factors like construction costs, travel time delay, noise externalities, and environmental emissions. This methodology enables planners to prioritize the generated developments at an early stage in the planning process both effectively and efficiently. As a consequence, the planner may allocate resources and facilitate transparent communication to stakeholders in early planning stages. The methodology can be used to help accelerate the early stages of the planning process, reducing iterations and efforts required for consensus among diverse stakeholders. It is expected to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of transport infrastructure planning in anticipation of evolving societal needs.
  • Considering automated vehicle deployment uncertainty in the design of optimal parking garages using real options
    Item type: Journal Article
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Martani, Claudio; Adey, Bryan T. (2021)
    Journal of Building Engineering
    © 2020 Elsevier Ltd Parking garages are often currently designed assuming that parking demand will be stable over their lifetime. The looming mobility shift towards automated vehicles (AVs), however, makes parking demand highly uncertain, with some scenarios leading to its complete disappearance at some time in the near future. The design of optimal parking garages needs to take this uncertainty into consideration and may lead to parking garages that can easily be transformed for other uses when beneficial. In situations of large future demand uncertainty, infrastructure owners are increasingly using the real options method to help evaluate the potential benefits of paying more for construction of flexibly designed infrastructure. The real options method, helps owners, to avoid under-, or overinvesting in infrastructure, through the minimisation of their risks. In this work, a methodology, which uses the real options method, is proposed to determine the optimal design of a parking garage located within a residential building. The methodology is used, together with estimates of the uncertainty in the future parking demand due to deployment of AVs, Monte Carlo simulations of the possible futures, stakeholder costs for operation and refurbishment costs for each of the different design alternatives and intervention strategies, to estimate the net benefits over the life-time of the parking garage. The methodology is used to evaluate designs and intervention strategies for the 14′000 m2 463-lot parking garage in a residential building in western Switzerland. The designs are a traditional design and a flexible design. The construction of a building according to the two design approaches would bear costs of 10 and 11 million CHF, respectively. The intervention strategies for the traditional building are a single stage intervention strategy and a no intervention strategy. The intervention strategies for the flexible building are a single-stage intervention strategy and a multi-stage intervention strategy. The traditionally designed building costs 2 million CHF to demolish and 29 million CHF to reconstruct as a residential building. The flexibly designed building costs 21 million to adapt for residential use. It is shown that the flexible design and a multi-stage intervention strategy (i.e. transforming the parking garage floor by floor on an as needed basis), provides the highest net benefits (2.2 million CHF). The flexible design and a single-stage intervention strategy provides the second highest net benefits (1.3 million CHF). A traditional design with a single-stage intervention strategy provides 0.5 million CHF in net benefit, and the traditional design with a no intervention strategy results in a net loss of 3.0 million CHF. A sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of the options. Since the use of the proposed methodology helps owners identify all the possible designs and intervention strategies as well as increases their ability to accurately estimate the net-benefit of their decisions, it is concluded that it is advantageous for owners to use the proposed methodology in determining the optimal design of parking garages. Its use will help ensure that they are optimally positioned to deal with the uncertain future.
  • The value of accelerating the infrastructure planning process
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Adey, Bryan T.; Roman, Orlando (2023)
    Life-Cycle of Structures and Infrastructure Systems
    Infrastructure planners strive to ensure that infrastructure meets the needs of stakeholders in the short, medium and long-term. This is a challenging task because there is considerable uncertainty associated with future stakeholder needs, and the infrastructure built to meet these needs has a life-time spanning decades, if not centuries. Additionally, the planning of either new infrastructure or the modification of existing infrastructure usually requires years, or even decades, meaning that stakeholder needs often change during the planning process itself. Planners’ responsiveness, i.e., how quickly planners can adjust to changing stakeholder needs, depends on the planning processes in which the planners are embedded. The relationship between improving responsiveness (in this paper the time taken to increase rail capacity to acceptable levels) and its impact on stakeholder needs (in this paper the unmet demands for acceptable travel comfort) is investigated using three fictive but realistic infrastructure planning process alternatives. The planning decision enabling the capacity increase is the expansion of the tracks from single to double track between Uster and Aathal in the Canton of Zürich, Switzerland. The responsiveness and travel comfort are modelled given an uncertain population growth. The results show that the responsiveness of infrastructure planners (1) plays a role in the ability to meet stakeholder needs, (2) can be measured and (3) provides argument that in developing planning processes, considering planner responsiveness could be worthwhile. The specific example shows that being more responsive outperforms acting early in approximately 90% of the scenarios modelled.
  • Who is willing to share their AV? Insights about gender differences among seven countries
    Item type: Journal Article
    Polydoropoulou, Amalia; Tsouros, Ioannis; Thomopoulos, Nikolas; et al. (2021)
    Sustainability
    The introduction of shared autonomous vehicles into the transport system is suggested to bring significant impacts on traffic conditions, road safety and emissions, as well as overall reshaping travel behaviour. Compared with a private autonomous vehicle, a shared automated vehicle (SAV) is associated with different willingness-to-adopt and willingness-to-pay characteristics. An important aspect of future SAV adoption is the presence of other passengers in the SAV—often people unknown to the cotravellers. This study presents a cross-country exploration of user preferences and WTP calculations regarding mode choice between a private non-autonomous vehicle, and private and shared autonomous vehicles. To explore user preferences, the study launched a survey in seven European countries, including a stated-preference experiment of user choices. To model and quantify the effect of travel mode attributes and socio-demographic characteristics, the study employs a mixed logit model. The model results were the basis for calculating willingness-to-pay values for all countries and travel modes, and provide insight into the significant heterogeneous, gender-wise effect of cotravellers in the choice to use an SAV. The study results highlight the importance of analysis of the effect of SAV attributes and shared-ride conditions on the future acceptance and adoption rates of such services.
  • A methodology for probabilistic pavement condition forecast based on Bayesian filters
    Item type: Journal Article
    Blumenfeld, Tim; Elvarsson, Arnor B.; Hajdin, Rade; et al. (2024)
    Structure and Infrastructure Engineering
    Decision making in pavement management relies on current road condition and the condition forecast. In this study, it is shown that both the condition forecast as well as the condition measurements are affected by uncertainties as demonstrated in a literature review and in preliminary studies of road condition data. If these uncertainties are to be considered in forecast models, the need for a probabilistic approach is evident. In this study a methodology based on an Extended Kalman filter (EKF) was developed and tested, which allows combining both empirical models and collected condition data for the development of section-based pavement forecast models. The model has been validated to predict the condition state effectively for all selected condition indicators. All relevant steps for the condition forecast have been implemented into a prototype to evaluate the applicability of the methodology using collected data on road networks from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Publications 1 - 10 of 16